Show me the (Christmas) gold...

The three kings, I’m told on authority it would be presumptuous of me to question, brought the infant Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 

Frankly, I reckon you can keep the frankincense and myrrh, just show me the gold. Which, I’m glad to say, is in line with mainstream thinking in most allegedly Christian societies. As the approach to Christmas shows.

The idea of exchanging gifts at Christmas has to be one of the smartest marketing ploys I’ve ever come across. What a boon for retailers, selling everyone presents to give to everyone else. It does indeed transform the celebration of the birth of Christ into the great feast of gold – the feast of Mammon, one might say – of the year.

Or at least, so it was until Covid hit us. 

Christmas craft fair near the old Valencia City Hall

Our local city holds a Christmas craft products fair. This year, with the need to avoid enclosed places, it’s on the square outside the old City hall. It’s just twenty stands or so, with no mulled wine or sausage with sauerkraut. The arrangements are Covid-sensitive, with masks obligatory, signs everywhere calling for social distancing and a guarded entrance to keep numbers below a prescribed maximum.

The items on sale are genuine artisanal products, locally made and of good quality. One of the stands is held by a friend, one of our neighbours, so we mainly went to see her and her delicately hand-made sliver jewellery. Though we also visited the other stands, of course, while we were there.

Our friend, with the welcome assistance of her daughter, 
on her jewellery stand at the craft fair

It was cool, by Valencian standards, but the sky was clear, the winter sunlight strong. Wandering the stands was pleasant, and we even bought a couple of things that we were pleased with. But it was sad to see how few visitors there were. The Valencian Community – that is to say, the entire region of 5 million people around the city – has closed its borders to all but essential travel, to keep Covid out. But that means there are no tourists. There haven’t, in particular, been any cruise ships for months, and they used to make a major contribution to the local economy, disgorging large numbers of visitors into the city, all with money to burn and an anxiety to take mementoes home with them.

Not any more. Which made the whole thing feel slightly like a feast of Mammon with no worshippers. A strangely sad experience.

We were there on 6 December, St Nicholas’s day, which seemed appropriate. A Christmas visit on the day of Santa Claus sounded about right. 

It turns out, however, that 6 December is also a Spanish national holiday, the day of the Constitution. The Town Hall Square is often the venue for political demonstrations and, indeed, one got going while we were there. There were Spanish flags, and a message probably best translated as ‘hands off the constitution’.

“Hands off the Constitution”:
the Right takes to the street on Spanish Constitution Day

Defence of the constitution sounds like the right kind of concern for Constitution Day. The day celebrates the referendum in 1978 when the Spanish people, by a large majority, voted for the present constitution. That marked the definitive end of the previous regime, the hard-right autocratic dictatorship of General Franco. It was the moment when parties of the Left, including the Communist Party, would at last re-emerge from the shadows, be legalised and take part in political debate again.

All those Spanish flags, however, suggested something somewhat different. Isn’t it odd how, these days, national flags which belong, in theory, to every citizen of a nation, have been taken over massively by parties of the right? That demonstration was no exception. These were right-wingers who, if they were defending the constitution, were doing so against alleged attacks from the centre-Left coalition headed by the current Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez. Supposed attacks that mostly take the form of instructions requiring sensible precautions against Covid, interpreted by many on the right as intolerable attacks on individual rights.

An interesting dilemma. A debate, in fact, that is dividing all the democracies at the moment. There’s a positive view of rights, which says “I have the right to do this thing and no one’s going to stop me”. That would include, for instance, going out of doors without a mask. And there’s a negative view, which says “I have the right to be protected against the threat you pose to me”. That would include obliging everyone to wear a mask, to help others avoid infection.

I wandered among the demonstrating group – it wasn’t really big enough to be called a crowd – saying nothing about my inclination to go for the negative view of rights, as opposed to their more positive inclination. I wasn’t looking for a debate, and I didn’t know how they might react. After all, it’s only a few weeks ago that several retired senior army officers were found to have exchanged WhatsApp messages in which they advocated executing 26 million Spaniards – the ‘reds’, by which they mean anyone to the left of Genghis Khan.

The demonstrators outside the Town Hall may not have shared that remarkable ambition. But I noticed some of them with badges of the Vox party, the inheritors of the Franco tradition. He didn’t murder 26 million, but he certainly despatched many tens of thousands. I can’t help imagining that the commitment to a democratic Constitution of some of those demonstrators extends, like Donald Trump’s, only as far as their interests go.

Difficult times, we live in, even in the Christmas season. Which clearly no longer has much to do with the celebration of Christ or with spreading goodwill to all mankind. Or even with the worship of Mammon to any significant level, given how few customers are heading to the shops these days.

No frankincense, no myrrh and, sadly, it seems, precious little gold either.